Voice-over-IP (VOIP) technology permits parties to communicate orally over a packet-switched IP network. VoIP technology has grown in popularity, and depending upon certain factors, can offer sound quality that is comparable to that of the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Also growing in popularity are wireless mobile networks. Wireless mobile networks permit a device to link to a network without requiring a physical conductive line to carry data between the device and the network. Further, such networks permit mobility by allowing a device to change access points in a manner transparent to network elements or nodes outside of the wireless mobile network domain.
Despite the growing popularity of VoIP technology and wireless mobile networks, there are no mobile client devices for present VoIP services over the Internet. One factor that hinders the advancement such mobile devices relates to finding a simple scheme by which a mobile device may be permitted to roam a significant geographic area (and therefore potentially wander between domains), while appearing keep a single IP address. The user datagram protocol (UDP) indexes connections by use of a quadruplet that contains the IP addresses and port number of both connection endpoints. Changing any one of these four numbers causes the connection to be disrupted and lost. Therefore, it is important that the device appear to keep the same IP address while roaming geographically. The difficulty in addressing this issue grows as the geographic area through which a device is permitted to roam grows.
From the foregoing, it is evident that there exists a need for a scheme by which a wireless IP telephony device can be permitted to roam a geographically significant area, such as a metropolitan area. It is desirable that such a scheme be relatively simple to implement as an overlay to an existing wireless network. It is further desirable that such a scheme be easily interconnected to the PSTN.